Weaving projects in Pakistan involve Turkmen, Uzbek, Hazara, and Tadjik refugees, all of whom are from Afghanistan. These people are, historically, some of the finest weavers. We provide the materials (wool, dyes, etc.,) designs, color combinations, sizes, and quality. Afghan-Uzbek refugees weave kilims, and the Tadjik are the producers of the sumacs, double-stitched, hand-embroidered carpets. The various Turkmen Tribes are among the quintessential nomads of Central Asia. Although it is not known who first developed the art of weaving a pile carpet, it has long been suggested that the Turkmen were among the first to refine this art and bring it to an unsurpassed level of technical, visually expressive, and symbolically transcendent mastery. All this was achieved while maintaining the strictly tribal and generally nomadic character of their existence, something reflected in the purely functional format of the great majority of their weavings. The Ersari are one of the larger main groupings of Turkmen Tribes. They traditionally (in recent centuries) lived in the more eastern part of the range of the Turkmen, near to Bokhara and Samarkand. After the Russian revolution most moved south to join their relations in northern Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan saw these refugees once more displaced, as many fled to Pakistan in order to maintain their religion and way of life. Brave and industrious people, they were willing to do whatever was necessary to maintain themselves and their way of life. What they have always known best was weaving carpets. Due to the pressures of the modern world the art and technique of dyeing wool with vegetable dyes for carpets had largely passed out of existence in the last 40 to 80 years.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 22:36:05 +0000
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